Meet Austin's yarn bomber

Saturday

Skeins of yarn of various colors covered the floor in the living room of Magda Sayeg's house in South Austin.

Large plastic bags and piles of knitted pieces were scattered through the room.

In the middle of all of this, Sayeg, 36, was perched on the sofa in front of one of the three hand-cranked looms on her coffee table. Her white bulldog Stella roamed the room, while the faint trace of world music was heard from the nearby kitchen.

Sayeg, a wife, mother of three, cafe co-owner and bookstore co-owner, was on deadline.

In the art world, she's the queen of knit graffiti, a movement she is widely credited with having started five years ago. Knit graffiti, or yarn bombing, is the crafters equivalent of a person grabbing a can of spray paint to tag a building.

So don't ask her to knit you a holiday sweater or socks. She won't. She makes colorful pieces that cover objects in everyday life such as signs, poles and street lights.

"It sometimes looks like candy or Dr. Seuss to me," said Sayeg's husband Dan Fergus, 50, who occasionally helps knit. "Graffiti has always been around. Everyone has had that need to show they exist."

Since moving to Austin in early 2009, Sayeg hasn't slowed down from her days in Houston. Back then she made news by covering anything from a sign post to an entire bus, which she did in Mexico City in 2008.

Sayeg is now introducing her art to Austin, a city that prides itself on being weird. The colorful cover on the long pipe outside the Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar Boulevard is hers. So is the reworked sign for Jo's Coffee as a surprise gift for Jo's owner Liz Lambert as well as the knitted display outside Domy Books, the bookstore she and Fergus, a University of Texas graduate, own at 913 E. Cesar Chavez St. Running the bookstore, which opened in 2008, and seeing the life Austin could offer were the reasons her family moved here, Sayeg said.

The hours on those earlier projects tagging car antennas and fire hydrants pale in comparison to the volume of time Sayeg has spent for upcoming projects - one can be experienced now on South Lamar Boulevard for this week's Art Week Austin, which concludes with Art City Austin on Saturday and Sunday. Her major work of original pieces is set for Rome in May. In Rome, she also has plans to cover a Smart car.

"Motherhood allows you to juggle a thousand things at one time," she said.

Sayeg, who's fit and has long curly brown hair, has spent 10 to 12 hours a day knitting at her rented home that she shares with Fergus and their children ages 7, 12 and 15.

She takes breaks from her largest loom, which has the circumference of a dinner plate, by doing yoga and other stretches to keep her body limber. Unlike most newcomers, Sayeg hasn't had time to learn much about Austin. She knows her way to Hobby Lobby, Walmart, Michaels and other craft stores.

By her account, she has 250 pieces to produce before the end of April. She estimates each piece takes 30 minutes to make on the loom. She contracted knitting help for the Rome project, which requires more than 100 pieces. In general, Sayeg knits everything herself, and she also repurposes old blankets and crocheted pieces.

For a while she had an internal struggle about using a loom instead of her needles. "To me, it's as personal and intimate as the needles," she said. "I'm just making more happen with it."

When she can, Sayeg said she uses her knitting needles. To pass time, she watches old movies. She also hired an assistant, Karen McClellan, who helps Sayeg run her Web site, answer media inquiries and fan letters, apply for grants and coordinate project logistics. "Laundry will always be there, but the project in Rome won't be," Sayeg said. "I'm certainly not worked up about my laundry. We'll get it done. I'm juggling. You don't choose when these cool things happen in your life. Essentially I've made a living of something illegal. I'm questioning the assumptions of knitting. And I question the assumptions of graffiti."

In recent years, knitting, crocheting and weaving, the hobbies of mothers and grandmothers of decades ago, have had a resurgence with a new generation of women and men. Sayeg hears from other knitters who seek her permission before they take on a yarn bomb project.

Also, several publishers have approached her about creating a book about her work, but with all of her upcoming projects, the book will have to wait until next year. Sayeg said it's difficult for her to turn down an opportunity to travel and display her artwork.

In the middle of finishing her latest projects, Sayeg took a sudden business meeting in New York last week for a possible new opportunity with an online retailer.

This past weekend, Sayeg returned to Austin to complete her project commissioned last year by Art Alliance Austin, which oversees Art Week Austin and Art City Austin. Her project, which will remain up through early June, captures the spirit of Art Week, said Meredith Powell, executive director of Art Alliance Austin.

Powell said: "We're very fortunate that Magda calls Austin home and we can commission a project of hers for the downtown Austin area. She's quite amazing."

In addition to Sayeg's South Lamar Boulevard project, she will knit bomb near City Hall this week. Those pieces will be joined by another commissioned piece, UT student Daniel Patrick Morrison's work of about 20,000 pieces of recycled cardboard, called Cardboard Sky. The temporary artwork from Morrison, 21, will be outside City Hall this weekend.

On Monday night, Sayeg and Fergus placed covers made from repurposed knitted and crocheted blankets over the series of blue panels on South Lamar Boulevard. Those panels are known as Moments, the $45,000 art piece created by Austin architect Carl Trominski for the city's Art in Public Places in 2003. In a 2005 story, American-Statesman arts writer Jeanne Claire van Ryzin wrote, "Unfortunately the blue panels are too vague to make for a memorable moment in Austin's public art history."

Sayeg's touch might give Trominski's work a colorful second life. Before she agreed, Sayeg said she got the OK from Trominski. On several occasions, she called her project "a collaboration with Trominski" even though the architect isn't involved in the temporary update. Trominski gave Sayeg a blue panel so she could get measurements for her design.

In an e-mail, Trominski wrote: "I find Magda's work very interesting and am happy she has chosen to work with the blue signs."

For Sayeg, there's life after the blue signs. She's off for a month in Rome, where she'll have the first exhibit of her work. For her visit, she has knitted long pink tubes that will cover florescent lights, evoking the glow of a lightsaber from "Star Wars." Her husband made a prototype light fixture so Sayeg could work on the look and dimensions.

Ultimately, she said she wants her familly to be proud of her and for her children to be inspired by her journey to pursue their dreams.

"This, to me, is a gift to my children," she said.

After all, this is a second act for Sayeg. Years after she traveled abroad, Sayeg became a single parent at age 20. During those years, she was on welfare and later was married and divorced.

In 1999, she married Fergus, a former art gallery owner. Later, the two ran Houston cafe, Brasil, which they still own, and the original Domy bookstore on the city's busy Westheimer Road. Sayeg didn't have a strong background in knitting. Bored at work one day in 2005, she completed her first knitted piece.

"My first piece was for the door knob of my store," said Sayeg, who owned women's store Raye in Houston. "The reaction was crazy. That's when the light bulb went off in my head."

Back then, Sayeg began knitting with her friends. The group, which disbanded in 2007, called itself Knitta, Please. As for the controversial name, she said, "I'm an Arab American woman. I know it means nothing derogatory or racist. It was a bit of empowerment."

In those years, she tagged posts and railings in Houston. Sayeg said she was motivated to react to the urban vibe and concrete juggle of Houston. She wanted to give it some softening and humanity.

Never did she think the desire for empowerment would give her an opportunity to visit Europe, Central America and Australia and meet international artists and other knitters.

"I had my own goals in life. I wanted to have a cool kitchen and a garden and compost," she said. "And a great bull dog. It has changed my life and changed my priorities. Maybe that house can wait. Maybe the garden can wait."

It was time to get back to knitting.

mharper@statesman.com; 445-3974

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.